Troegs Brewing Co. poised for more growth

HERSHEY - As it approaches the two-year anniversary of its move to Hershey, Troegs Brewing Company is continually growing.

And with new equipment recently installed and more on the way, the company is poised to grow even more in the coming years.

In the past several months, Troegs has installed two new bottling lines, a canning line and added fermenters that allowed it to increase its brewing capacity.

"It's like we're right on the verge of putting all this new stuff out, and it's just really, really exciting because months of planning is going to culminate with all these different releases," said Troegs spokesman Jeff Herb.

The new bottling lines - one for 12- and 22-ounce bottles and one for 750-mililiter "cork and cage" bottles - allow Troegs to more efficiently bottle and package beer, Herb said.

The old 12-ounce bottling line did between 100 and 110 bottles a minute, and the new one will be able to do 230 to 250 a minute, he said.

"It was a really good run with her," Herb said. "She treated us well for all those years, but capacity is getting as such that we needed something a little more efficient, a little quicker."

The old bottling line, which was one of the first pieces of equipment owners Chris and John Trogner bought when the brewery opened in 1997 in Harrisburg, was purchased by Appalachian Brewing Company.

While already installed, the new "cork-and-cage" bottle filler has yet to be used. It will probably be used to bottle a pumpkin beer in the coming weeks. It will then be used primarily to fill bottles of beer from Troegs' recently expanded barrel-aging program - beer aged in bourbon and wine barrels.

The canning line, which Herb said should be up and running by the end of the year, will initially be used to can Perpetual IPA and Troegenator. It has not been decided if all of Troegs beers will be canned.

"We're going to lead off with those two and see how they go," Herb said.

Pallets of Mad Elf sit waiting to be shipped next to Troegs new bottling and packaging line. (LEBANON DAILY NEWS/BRAD RHEN)

The brewery recently had installed four new 300-barrel fermenters, and Herb said they are currently filled with Troegs winter seasonal beer, Mad Elf Ale. The new fermenters will allow Troegs to produce somewhere around 55,000 barrels of beer this year, he said. That is up from 44,000 in 2012.

In addition, eight new 800-barrel fermenters are on order and should be installed by the end of the year, Herb said. They will be located along the brewery's exterior, probably in the rear, Herb said.

"That's going to be huge for the expansion of the brewery in the future," he said. "They're going to be able to have the capacity to do so much. Right now, we have a 100-barrel brewhouse, and we're not even scratching the surface of what we could be doing."

Despite the major increase in fermenting space, Herb said, Troegs likely will not ramp up production too quickly.

"Troegs has always been kind of slow and steady growth, which has served us well pretty much since we started," he said. "But this is going to allow us to breathe easy and go at our own pace."

Troegs makes six year-round beers, five seasonal beers and small batches of experimental beers called "Scratch" beers. Troegs' beers are distributed in eight states and Washington, D.C. Herb said there has been talk of expanding distribution to more states, but nothing is concrete.

In October 2012, three of Troegs beers won gold medals, and Troegs was named mid-size brewery of the year at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.